Masi Oka plays hopefulness as if nobody had told him it was uncool, and on Heroes that made him the easiest person in a crowded cast to like. Television has since given him steadier work than cinema has given him interesting parts.
Fi1m perspective
An office worker discovers he can stop time, and the look on his face is not fear but delight. That is Hiro Nakamura in Heroes (2006), and it is Masi Oka's whole method in one expression. Most actors handed a superpower play the burden; Oka plays the fan who cannot believe his luck. He is a bilingual performer who often translates his own dialogue between English and Japanese, and Hiro's mixture of comedy and earnestness comes from somebody who knows the comics the programme is borrowing from. When Tim Kring's larger mystery turned solemn, and it often did, Hiro was the character we wanted it to cut back to.
He arrived at acting sideways. After a degree in computer science and mathematics he worked as a digital effects artist at Industrial Light & Magic, moving to Los Angeles around 2001 to act while keeping up the effects work part-time. Small parts led to a recurring role on Scrubs, then Heroes ran from 2006 to 2010 and made him recognisable. He went straight into Hawaii Five-0 (2010) as Dr Bergman, an eccentric medical examiner he played for seven years alongside Daniel Dae Kim, and has since produced, including the live-action Death Note (2017), in which he also appears as Detective Sasaki, and kept busy with voice work into the 2020s.
The strength and the limitation are the same thing. Oka is good at the enthusiastic supporting man, the one who is slightly too keen and knows more than the leads about something obscure, and Hollywood has been happy to hand him that part, and not much else, over and over. Get Smart (2008) uses him well in a comic supporting role as Bruce. Our review of Heroes recommended it chiefly for the hopeful first series, and he is a large part of why. We enjoyed Hiro's company more than anyone else's in that first run, because Oka never let the joke be on the character; the delight was Hiro's own and we were invited to share it. Bullet Train (2022) is the other side of the ledger: he is the Conductor, and in a film that has time for Brad Pitt's bucket hat and Brian Tyree Henry quoting Thomas the Tank Engine, we did not find ourselves writing about him at all.
Television has served him better than cinema. Tim Kring is the collaborator who has got the most out of him, twice, on Heroes and Heroes Reborn, by building a character around the fandom Oka actually has. "I am a geek. I am an otaku," he said in 2017, and his best work is what happens when someone writes him a part that takes that seriously. If you want to see what he can do, go back to Hiro and forgive the later series. He is the man who used to make the special effects; on screen he has mostly been asked to react to them.
Biography
Masi Oka is a Japanese actor, producer and digital effects artist. Born in Tokyo in 1974, he moved to Los Angeles with his mother at the age of six. He graduated from Brown University with a BS in computer science and mathematics and a minor in theatre arts.
Oka began his career in visual effects at Industrial Light & Magic. He became widely known for playing Hiro Nakamura in the NBC series Heroes (2006–2010), earning nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. He later portrayed Dr Max Bergman in Hawaii Five-0 (2010–2019) and reprised his Heroes role in the 2015 miniseries Heroes Reborn.
